The Biggest Myth in Social Media: Content is King

September 21, 2012 6:27 pmPublished by Bill Boorman

Kevin Costner got it wrong; if you build it, they will not just come. Because you have a Facebook page, a blog and a bit of content counts for very little. Having your job ads accessible by tab is not going to bring you candidates if nobody visits your page. The biggest myth in social media is that content is King. You hear it banded about at every conference but let us be honest about it, content only gets royalty status when somebody actually reads it. Found content is king, and in Facebook terms that means that you need to get people talking about your content, because then people will come.

When I look at a fanpage, I am less interested in how many fans you might have, I always scroll down the time line a little to find the talking about number. That tells me how many people are liking and sharing your content and that tells me just how far you are reaching, and more importantly how many eyes are seeing it. The first measure of success is eyeballs on your page, because eyeballs mean possible candidates.

The average person has 125 friends on Facebook. Content is displayed in the stream according to an algorithm known as Edgerank. That’s why, unless you have changed the settings, you don’t see all the content from all your friends, only the ones Facebook determine are your closest ones according to your on-line interactions. Edgerank gives different ranks to interactions and is calculated according to affinity, weight and time. Affinity is calculated by how often you interact with a timeline. The more you interact the stronger the relationship. Weight is calculated according to the types of interaction. A comment is considered more valuable than a like because it takes a bigger effort. Lastly, time is valued according to how recent the interaction was. The longer the period of time between interactions then the lower the ranking. This means that unless people are interacting regularly they will not see your content, friends, and fans or not.

This means you need to be thinking interactive content that gets liked, shared or commented on. Posts that ask for questions or comments get people interacting, as well as pictures (an instagram account is great for this) and video. I have found making sure that you get plenty of pictures of employees at work and with colleagues, with tagging gets them involved and liking content. Encouraging your brand advocates to add comments gets content shared. Ideas for worthwhile content that gets people commenting and sharing are things like view from my window, my desk picture, what’s in the canteen etc. This might seem a bit mundane, but it gets people involved and is of massive interest to potential candidates looking in, the odd appropriate cartoon or joke also does not go amiss. Get your fans interacting to get your content seen, and make it king.